


In Dreams

by Neverever



Category: Marvel
Genre: Dreams, Ice, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25500040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/pseuds/Neverever
Summary: Steve dreams while in the ice and meets someone new.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 106
Collections: 2020 Cap/Iron Man Tiny Reverse Bang





	In Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [An Ending and Beggining [ART]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25027459) by [papoula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/papoula/pseuds/papoula). 



Erskine hadn’t told Steve about the hibernation side effects.

Maybe he had, and Steve, hyped up on hope and adrenaline, hadn’t paid close enough attention. Besides, it wasn’t like Steve had to know what happened to him in extreme cold. It wasn’t part of the day-to-day plans and calculations he had to make when fighting Nazis and HYDRA soldiers.

When he plunged into the ocean after the plane exploded, Steve had a split second to figure out that he was going to wake up dead.

He’d had a good life. He knew that. He was at peace now.

Peace was never in the cards for one Steve Rogers. Not when he was born, not now, not in the future.

Instead of death and a trip to the other side, Steve fell into an endless dream world. He played in the streets, his mother washed clothes in their small apartment, his dad read the newspaper. His life unfolded like a technicolor movie up on a screen and he was watching in the audience. 

His now perfect memory picked out small details like the raised stitching on a baseball, the weight of a pencil in his hand in art class, and the soft, worn leather of the restraints on his wrists while he waited to be injected with the serum.

All of it floated through Steve’s mind as if it had happened to someone else, in a different life. 

He played through days as if he was reading a book. What if he opened that door instead of that door? What if he said yes instead of no? He shuffled through dozens of possible endings and changes, like a deck of cards.

It all changed when the robot first appeared.

The first new thing Steve had dreamed of in thousands of dreams. 

Steve was in a bronze gilded library, sitting at a table under a transparent green lampshade, a book open in front of him. A flash of red and gold caught his eye and he swiveled around, looking for the flash. The robot hovered in the stacks, disappearing whenever Steve caught sight of it, and reappearing when Steve glanced away.

He didn’t dream of the robot for a few days.

Then the robot reappeared. In the middle of a fight with the Invaders against Red Skull. Then in Steve’s live drawing class at Pratt. And again in the airfield when Steve and Bucky arrived to babysit an experimental plane.

Every time Steve approached, the robot wavered and flickered like a ghost and disappeared.

Steve didn’t stop trying. He dropped everything, even punching Red Skull into oblivion, to chase after the robot. He finally cornered the robot, who for some reason didn’t evaporate this time.

“Who are you?” Steve asked.

“Who are you?” the robot parroted back.

Now, Steve had read all about robots in his science fiction magazines and he had learned a lot in the past few years. “You’re not a robot. You’re a person.”

The robot flickered and dimmed and evaporated like smoke.

Steve persisted in pursuing the person in the robot suit. Then he dreamed he was falling from the plane, his army clothes ripping away in the wind to reveal his Captain America uniform, his cowl slipping out of his belt.

The man in the robot suit swooped in and caught him as he flailed in the air. “I’ve got you,” he said.

“Who are you?” Steve asked, nonplussed at having been rescued.

“You know who.”

Somehow Steve knew everything about the man who had built armor out of scraps. They flew through moonlit clouds like they had been made for that exact moment, two halved souls finding the other half.

Steve had not believed in soulmates before. But this man -- Tony? -- was the closest thing he’d ever found.

Then Tony threw his arms around Steve’s waist, holding him as they hovered high above the earth. “I’d love to see you,” he said to Tony.

Tony hesitated. Then the helmet folded down and away from his face. Breath caught in Steve’s throat because Tony was as beautiful as an angel. He reached out to touch Tony’s face. “You’re gorgeous,” said Steve reverently. 

“You’re the gorgeous one,” Tony replied, equally reverently.

“Why didn’t I meet you before --” they both said at the same time.

It didn’t matter now whatever “before” meant -- Tony was here and Steve had never felt this connection to anyone else. He glanced at Tony’s lips, leaning in for the kiss --

And, poof, Tony was gone and Steve fell into a darkness so profound and deep that he couldn’t escape.

Steve woke up. First his hand, then his leg twitched. The movement shocked him. He blinked, opening his eyes up to see worried people gathered around him. Strange circus people and a red-and-gold robot.

“Tony?” 

The man from his dream, standing there. 

“Steve! You’re Steve!” Tony replied, taking off his helmet. “After all these years, finally.” 

And this time Tony leaned in and gave Steve his first kiss of the 21st century. “Welcome home.”


End file.
